Review Summary

Childhood ends for Harry Potter, the young wizard with the zigzag scar and phantasmagorical world of troubles, not long after the dragons have roared and the merpeople have screeched their empty threats through broken teeth. And, as in the book "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire" on which this latest and happily satisfying film adaptation is based, childhood ends with screams and a final shudder in a graveyard crowded with tombstones and evil. If Alfonso Cuarón raised the series to a new level with "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban," the director Mike Newell, best known for ingratiating mainstream fare like "Four Weddings and a Funeral" and best remembered for the bracing likes of "Donnie Brasco," manages to keep his contribution at a similarly high level of enthrallment. The gloom and doom may be less poetically realized, but the combination of British eccentricity, fatalism and steady-on pluck remains irresistibly intact. — Manohla Dargis